The next morning he had been wet as usual and his mother had frowned disapprovingly as she put him in a tub to soak off the pee that had dried on his skin. When she came back, she put him in one of the training pants he had worn a year earlier. They were a bit tight on him and the seams of the legs dug into the skin of his legs. When she refused to let him wear any pants that day, four-year-old Andrew was mortified. She dressed him in a T-shirt and made him watch TV while sitting on one of his baby blankets. Later that morning, he had pooped in his training pants and his mother had thrown a fit. She cleaned him up and gave him a bare-bottomed spanking over her lap and then used regular safety pins to secure him in a triple layer of tattered old diapers that she had been using as dust cloths since he was potty-trained. Then she took him to the store, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and the thick covering of holey diapers to buy him a set of new cloth diapers, diaper pins and several pairs of the largest plastic pants they had as well as two large plastic baby bottles and nipples.
Andrew spent the rest of the week in cloth diapers, eating baby food and nursing from a baby bottle as if he was twelve-months-old again. Andrew’s mother made sure he wouldn’t become voluntarily constipated by deliberately withholding his stools by the simple means of adding a combination of lactose and Colace to every bottle of formula he drank. By the end of the day, his stools were as soft as a newborn’s and as impossible to control. The first time he pooped in his diapers, he cried inconsolably for hours afterwards. On the second day, his anal sphincter adjusted itself to the new environment and became completely relaxed. His body knew instinctively that there was no point in wasting effort over the inevitable. Later that day, his bladder sphincter gave up the battle for continence as well. Andrew was shattered, within two days he had been reduced to the same level of bladder and bowel control as the average one-year-old. He began wetting and messing himself with no prior notice whatsoever. Andrew’s mother continued the laxative treatment for another day, just to be positive that it was working and from then on she gave him unadulterated baby formula. Of course, she hedged her bets by feeding him a jar of Gerber strained prunes every day to taper him off the laxatives slowly.
His mother went to extraordinary lengths to embarrass her four-year-old son. She got out his old high chair, stroller, playpen and toys from the attic and put away the older toys of a four-year-old. She refused to allow him to watch TV, forcing him instead to spend his time in his playpen with the toys of his infancy. If he tried to talk, she put a pacifier in his mouth. His meals were exactly the same that he ate as a one-year-old; formula and baby food. She changed his diapers only four times a day; once in the morning when he woke and after every meal. If he wet or messed them at any other time, he was forced to endure the discomfort until the next diaper change. Fortunately for the condition of his skin, she would slather a thick coating of vaseline over his bottom and pubes at every diaper change to provide a rash preventing moisture barrier. Even with the vaseline, the long periods in wet diapers took their toll and by the end of the week, he had acquired a mild rash on his perineum and inner thighs.
Andrew grew to hate cloth diapers, associating them with the heavy, cold, soggy sensation they gave him after the first hour or so after he had wet or messed them. If she had put him in disposable diapers, their limited absorbency would have forced her to change him after the first or second wetting so he wouldn’t leak all over everything. The embarrassing crinkling sound they made was better than the being forced to drag a heavy sodden flannelette diaper like a medieval punishment for his lack of continence. At least then, he’d have had been in a clean dry diaper after every wetting. As it was, the double and triple layers of diapers she used in combination with the tight-fitting plastic panties allowed her to leave him in them all day without staining the rug or furniture. She took him everywhere in his diapers; to her friend’s houses, shopping and for the final humiliation, she took him to his pediatrician for a checkup dressed like a baby. His pediatrician observed the diapers and plastic pants that had been removed by the office nurse and carefully laid out at the head of the examining table. When the pediatrician asked why he was back in diapers again, wondering if he had been having problems with his potty training, his mother had responded that he had seemed to have regressed in the past week and could no longer keep himself clean or dry. The physician hmmm-ed noncommittally and diagnosed little Andy as having a mild case of diaper rash and had prescribed an ointment to be applied to his crotch and anal area at every diaper change.